Welcome to the Winobloggers webpage! Students and professors from different universities meet to discuss their findings on Winogradsky columns they constructed!
We learn how to formulate hypotheses, observe, comment, ask and reply to questions related to our scientific experiments.

Winogradksy columns

'In the field of observation, chance only favors the prepared mind' Pasteur 1854

Blog posts

Sunday, 10 April 2016

Universidad de Cádiz_GrupoB4B7_Entry3 : Day 28

Good afternoon,

In our bottle,
we can watch, making a comparision with the first day, the level of the water
has increased due to that the number of seaweed has increased too. In addition
the water is a little more cloudy now.

At the bottom
of the bottle, we can appreciate that the darck color previous it is
disappearance now. If we are going to the top, we find with an orange color,
which is due to the existences of the oxidative iron bacterians. This color
decreases towards brown colors. In this zone we can find some cianobacterians,
which has expelled gases to form little holes.

In the lateral
of the bottle, we find oxidative iron bacterians owing to his color , which is
orange.

In the
part of the bottle were the light doesn’t
influence we watch from the bottom to the top a dark blue color, which shows us
that three is matter.

Besides, we
watch in the middle that there is iron (III) due to his color. In this zone we
can check that the number of cianobacterians have increased of the size due to
his green color has increased too.

If we compare
our bottle with the other bottle which was in the darkness, we can watch that
their water has increased the level too. The cloudy is the same that the last
day. It is owing on to carbon dioxide.

At the top, we
can go on observing a little of oxide iron layer.

Under this
layer, which has increased a little we observe greys colors due to organic
matter.

Near to the
bottom and this zone, we see a dark color with some black lines and points.

The bottle on the
left is the one about which the light has influenced. However, the bottle on
the right is the one about which the darkness has influenced

I suppose it depends how you see the gradient. Cyanobacteria (or microalgae) have already grown on the sides of the bottle before anoxic conditions and sulfate reduction dominated. So for that part of the column, where the green patches have grown, the gradient is a combination of a vertical and a horizontal gradient.

Bear in mind that I have seen some Wino recipes that suggest to put the columns initially in the dark and to not overmix the sediment when preparing the column to avoid introducing too much oxygen thus giving a headstart to aerobic organisms.

We will have to try and compare two bottles next time. More experiments!